I remember my husband coming home from medical school one day and reporting
that he'd been told about the hoofbeats principle: When you hear hoofbeats,
think of horses, not zebras. But he said his professor added that one
should never forget that zebras do exist, too... as do quaggas.
I gave him a nice pen-and-ink drawing of a herd of zebras for his office
wall, but I've never been able to find a picture of a quagga. He says he's
treated a few, though, in more than thirty years of medical practice.

After 25 years in the university environment and 11 years running a small
business dealing with the public, for me the principle of Ockham's Razor
was expressed in "Do not assume malice when an explanation of stupidity
is sufficient."

My brother was a vastly experienced helicopter pilot who became the Royal
Navy's senior crash investigator. Before the regulations retired him at 55
"at the height of my powers", he investigated some hundred or so "incidents"
worldwide, both for the UK armed forces and civil aviation. Crash scenes
are by definition very messy and it was where "apply Ockham's razor" was
one of his guiding maxims.

Another, similar, was Sherlock's, "When you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever else remains, however improbable, must be the truth." But he also
always bore in mind, again from the world's favourite sleuth, "... there's
nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact"... usually meaning a "pilot
error" verdict!

Several years ago I visited Canterbury Cathedral and found the tomb
of Archbishop Morton while touring the Crypt. Having learned all about
Morton's Fork during my university years, I was very excited and spent the
next half-hour looking for someone else who would appreciate his fork. Odd
that it would take A.Word.A.Day to keep his memory alive.

There is a similar fork in chess
where two valuable pieces on the board are covered with the same piece
so that no matter which piece the opponent decides to move he is going to
lose the other valuable piece.

From: Joseph Leff (joeleff natspin.com)
Subject: Morton's fork

Among bridge players there is a well known ploy called the Morton's Fork
Coup in which a defender
is offered a choice of two equally bad plays.

From: Tom Sigafoos (tomsigafoos gmail.com)
Subject: Morton's fork

There's a current application of Morton's Fork in the logic of climate-change
deniers: (1) It absolutely isn't happening; and (2) if it is, there's
absolutely nothing we can do about it.

An even more modern citation is rumored to be the El Al Israel Airlines
dining menu. When a customer asked if there was a second choice of lunch
meal, the flight attendant said, "You could eat lunch or not eat lunch."

In 1974 Volkswagen introduced a sporty hatchback called the Scirocco.
According to the specifications, the base model was equipped with steel
wheels, but every Scirocco sold in the US was shod with alloy wheels
because they were a "required option".

From: Edmond Spaeth (edspaeth aol.com)
Subject: Hobson's choice

Much like a Hobson's choice, was the marketing strategy of a car dealership
known as Orange Ford because it was situated in Newburgh, NY, a city in
Orange County, NY. Emblazoned across the roofline of their showroom was
the question, "What color ORANGE Ford would you like?" Of course, the
word ORANGE was distinctly that color, but they did sell many cars that
weren't that color. This dealership may still be in existence but if so,
it has moved from the location where I first noticed that sign.

From: James McKelvey (mckelvey maskull.com)
Subject: Black Model T

Many people know the Ford quotation, and therefore believe that all Model
Ts were black. But that was only true during part of the long production
period. Here's from Wikipedia:

By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model Ts. It was, however, a
monolithic bloc; as Ford wrote in his autobiography, "Any customer can
have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black". Model
Ts in different colors were produced from 1908 to 1914, and then again
from 1926 to 1927. It is often stated that Ford chose black because the
paint dried faster than other colored paints available at the time, and
a faster drying paint would allow him to build cars faster since he would
not have to wait so long for the paint to dry. Ford engineering documents
suggest black was chosen because it was cheap and durable. Over thirty
different types of black paint were used on various parts of the Model
T. These were formulated to satisfy the different means of applying the
paint to the various parts, and had distinct drying times, depending on
the part, paint, and method of drying.

From: Finn Poulsen (fipo optonline.net)
Subject: Hobson's choice

The "Thought for Today" following the "Hobson's choice" entry should have
been this poem by Piet Hein:

FREE CHOICE

People are meant
to hold various views;
which has been construed
to mean
that Rulers should give them
the freedom to choose,
and one thing
to choose between.

(Piet Hein, Grooks 5, page 43)

From: David Steiner (davidesteiner gmail.com)
Subject: St. Elmo's fire
Def: An electrical discharge visible at the surface of a conductor, as a ship's mast or an airplane's wing.

In the '70s I flew into the center of typhoons in the Pacific 99 times. We
sometimes had St. Elmo's fire in the cockpit and were often struck by
lightning. Exciting stuff and fortunately, harmless.

St. Elmo's fire is a very familiar phenomenon. It was very common to see
little mini-lightning shows on the windscreen at night when we were in
the weather. It's like continual miniature lightning bolts sticking to
the windshield, flat, in two dimensions. However, I remember one night
in the 727 over Rochester, NY, there was a ball of St. Elmo's fire that
remained 8 feet out in front of the radome for ten minutes. It lit up the
cockpit. Nature is an amazing thing!

From: Paul Unwin (pdunwin yahoo.com)
Subject: St. Elmo's fire

Static charge build-up on airplane wings can cause broadband electromagnetic
"noise" that can interfere with airplane communications. To alleviate this
problem, the tips of the wings and empennage (i.e. vertical fin, horizontal
stabilizer, and tailcone) of modern airplanes have static wicks that allow
the charge to bleed off rather than discharging suddenly, thus limiting
the amount EM interference generated.

From: Herb Rosenthal (herbrose comcast.net)
Subject: St. Elmo's Fire

A hundred years ago or so, I worked at the transmitter site of an AM radio
station in Syracuse, New York. The tower was about 335 feet high,and during
lightning storms, I could see the "balls of fire" rolling down the guy
wires and jumping the insulators to ground with a very loud "bang".

The first time I heard this was my first time at the site; I called the
chief engineer and he assured me that this was normal, and not to worry
or turn the station off the air.

Pretty scary for a 17-year-old! Those sailors must have been terrified!

There is some controversy regarding the use of apostrophes for diseases
named after the researchers who discovered them. There are a number of
issues involved, but it is at least partially a political question:
Who "owns" a disease? The National Down Syndrome Society specifically
states a preference for "Down" over "Down's" "because an 'apostrophe s'
connotes ownership or possession." The online Merriam-Webster dictionary,
which reflects common usage, is inconsistent, using "Down syndrome",
but "Parkinson's disease". I'm a copy editor for a medical journal,
and our policy is to avoid apostrophes in these constructions (this
would not include Lou Gehrig's disease [amyotrophic lateral sclerosis],
since Gehrig actually had the disease). Our policy has occasionally led
to complaints from authors, who are concerned that readers searching for,
say "Parkinson's" rather than "Parkinson" in the US National Library of
Medicine (PubMed) database will not be able to find their papers. It's a
legitimate problem. I noted at one point four different versions in the
PubMed database for what my journal would call "Graves disease", including
"Grave's disease", "Graves' disease", and "Graves's disease". A researcher
would have to use four separate searches to find all of the papers on this
condition. Readers who wish to learn more about this issue should consult
the American Medical Association style manual.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Dictionaries are like watches: the worst is better than none, and the best
cannot be expected to go quite true. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer
(1709-1784)